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posted by n1 on Friday April 14 2017, @11:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the great-equalizer dept.

Does the U.S. research community need a new body devoted to rooting out research misconduct?

The U.S. research community needs to do a better job of both investigating misconduct allegations and promoting ethical conduct—or the government might act unilaterally in ways that scientists won't like.

That's the implicit message sent by a new report out today from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine entitled Fostering Integrity in Research. The report's key recommendation is that universities and scientific societies create, operate, and fund a new, independent, nongovernmental Research Integrity Advisory Board (RIAB). The board would serve as a clearinghouse to raise awareness of the issues, as an honest broker to mediate disagreements, and as a beacon to help institutions that lack the knowledge or resources to root out bad behavior and foster good behavior.

Other entities are already doing these things, but none has research integrity as its sole focus nor covers so much territory. Federal funding agencies investigate and punish miscreants who misuse taxpayer dollars, universities train scientists as part of their mission to advance knowledge, and scientific societies and journals have adopted ethical standards for their authors and members. After reviewing that landscape, the committee concluded that all of those organizations need to step up their game.

Also at NPR.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @12:32PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @12:32PM (#493924)

    POC [shorl.com]

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 14 2017, @12:48PM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 14 2017, @12:48PM (#493930) Journal
    Here's how you'd actually use [sciencemag.org] markets. Real money betting markets on the outcomes of scientific research would cull a lot of the crap as well as give me a good source of income.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:00PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:00PM (#494074)

      And we're off! The idiots are in the lead but will they be able to survive the long haul stretch that is human society?? Current outlook is grim...

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:16AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:16AM (#494300) Journal

        And we're off! The idiots are in the lead but will they be able to survive the long haul stretch that is human society?? Current outlook is grim...

        There's no point to criticizing markets when you don't know how they work. Stop being part of the idiot problem.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:05PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:05PM (#494076)

      Because nothing good ever came out of non-profit motivated research... and of course the market would take care of it because "reasons".

      Oh look a story that highlights the issue with for-profit systems http://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/drug-giant-aspen-plot-destroy-cancer-medicine-big-pharma-times-investigation-a7683521.html [independent.co.uk]

      Somewhere along the way you nutters forgot that humanity's goal is to thrive and advance. To make it easier to do so we created the concept of "money" which lead to the creation of "the economy". You have apparently forgotten that the economy exists to serve humanity, not the other way around.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:54PM (#494113)

        Read the parent's link.

        The link is not about for-profit research or translational versus basic research. The link details that you can get better judgments of whether or not a study will be reproducible by letting experts place small bets on the outcome. In a way, this is a simple measure of how they judge the likelihood of the results being correct and the quality of the data.